commonplace
a theme of general application
it
a set of personal beliefs
poetry
don't act like you don't speak
talkboxers
constantly connected computer creatures
♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩ ♩
0911171727
RONNY'S THEOREM:
Brilliant
Hahahaha beepbeepbeeeep gahhh
Blank
Nothingness?
Beer before beer youre in the clear, liquor before liquor never been sicker
Walk without rhythm and you wont attract the worm
0911141555
PLEASE WRITE A BRIEF PERSONAL NARRATIVE
My name is Ronny Kerr and I was born on May 26, 1988 to two loving parents, one from a small, dusty, desert town called Miami, Arizona (my father), and the other from a small, dusty, tropical town called Juigalpa, Nicaragua (my mother). I have one brother five years older than me and one brother four years younger than me.
Daly City, the suburb just south of San Francisco (and probably one of the foggiest cities in the world), was my birthplace and hometown, and I still call it home since I return there for every school break.
I was raised Catholic, attended a Catholic elementary school for a few years, and attended a Catholic all-boys high school, but I no longer identify myself with that faith.
Though my parents always played great music (Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, etc.) for me, I really tuned into music as an obsession in middle school, around the time my parents gave me a drum set for Christmas, coincidentally. Since then, I've been jamming with friends, scrawling my favorite lyrics in note margins during class, and dreaming of concerts every day. Reading has been an even older passion for me, as I started reading well before I enrolled in kindergarten. The arts, in general, have always held a special attraction for me and nothing makes me more passionate than writing or making music, except perhaps being in love (though the two are hardly mutually exclusive).
I love learning about the world and questioning just about anything anybody says about it. Life has always been and will always be an elusive, fractal-shaped enigma, to me, and so far it appears as though it will never cease to spark my curiosity.
0911041124
ISOLATION (A LITTLE BIT, SOMETIMES)
0910290101
SILENT SHOUT
i'm having a pretty hard time finding my own words these days. so i'll let Calvin do the talking again:
0910241816
SATURN
low complexity lens flare
fires me orange, over oxen
over other obviously unsublime mammals
while a
rosy-pained window dovetails my
satisfaction in saturn, marginalia
interstellar.
0910220053
INTERSTELLAR SPACE
except i also want to wish away things, like conversations.
0910041756
WHERE IS MY MIND?
if i smoke enough marijuana, i'll entertain the possibility of death.
if i drink enough alcohol, i'll forget all about death.
if i eat enough mushrooms, i'll die and be reborn.
if i snort enough cocaine, i'll stay awake so long that death will become impossible.
if i shoot enough heroin, i'll welcome death.
0910012039
OBSERVATIONS ON THE FEELING OF THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE SUBLIME, IMMANUEL KANT
the sight of a mountain whose snow covered peak rises above the clouds is sublime, the sight of flower-strewn meadows is beautiful.
the description of a raging storm is sublime, the description of Elysium is beautiful.
Milton's portrayal of the infernal kingdom is sublime, Homer's portrayal of the girdle of Venus is beautiful.
the sublime is enjoyment but with horror, the beautiful is a pleasant sensation but one that is joyous and smiling
tall oaks and lonely shadows in a sacred grove are sublime, flower beds, low hedges and trees trimmed into figures are beautiful.
night is sublime, day is beautiful.
the sublime moves, the beautiful charms.
the sublime is always great, the beautiful can be small.
the sublime must be simple, the beautiful can be adorned and ornamented.
understanding is sublime, wit is beautiful.
courage is sublime, artfulness is beautiful.
veracity and honesty are sublime, jest and flattery are beautiful.
servility is sublime, courtesy is beautiful.
the sublime stimulates esteem, the beautiful stimulates love.
friendship is sublime, love is beautiful.
tragedy is sublime, comedy is beautiful.
large stature is the sublime, small stature is the beautiful.
dark coloring and black eyes are sublime, light coloring and blue eyes are beautiful.
a somewhat greater age is sublime, youth is beautiful.
genuine virtue is sublime, adoptive virtue is beautiful.
a righteous man with a noble heart is sublime, a goodhearted man with a kind heart is beautiful.
thoughtful silence is sublime, affability is beautiful.
the sublime is melancholy, the beautiful is sanguine.
men are sublime, women are beautiful.
the Germans, English, and Spanish are sublime, the Italians and the French are beautiful.
0909242053
THE SUBLIME, ACCORDING TO EDMUND BURKE
in 1757, renowned philosopher Edmund Burke published an eloquent piece entitled, "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful." in this work, Burke describes in the clearest and most succinct possible way the guidelines necessary for something to be Sublime. he sums up the monster as follows:
Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analagous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.
now, with that apt summary alone, you might already be flipping through the archives of your mind, shuddering at those Sublime memories in your life, those Sublime vistas, those Sublime moments. and you probably already have a good idea of what Burke is talking about. but he could not content himself. like any good taxonomist, Burke sought to unambiguously inscribe a law by which everything in the universe could be classified as either Sublime or not.
before we take a look at his various classifications, however, we must be clear about a few things. the Sublime is not an emotion. it is productive of emotion. just as the release of a thousand balloons is not happiness and the murder of a puppy is not sadness, so too the Sublime instances in this world are not the emotion themselves. the central emotion produced by the Sublime, according to Burke, is Astonishment:
The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object that it cannot entertain any other, nor by consequence reason on that object which employs it. Hence arises the great power of the sublime, that far from being produced by them, it anticipates our reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force. Astonishment, as I have said, is the effect of the sublime in its highest degree; the inferior effects are admiration, reverence and respect.
believable enough, i might say. but why the obsession with terror, horror? why can't the Sublime be summoned by something wonderful and beautiful? are we not ever Astonished at the sight of a gorgeous garden or arrested by awe in the face of flowering beauty? maybe we are. but maybe, and i think Burke argues this, there is something greater at work here. Burke studied the wide range of human emotions feverishly and one conclusion he arrived at is that "no passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear." therefore, if when we speak of the Sublime we speak of that which is productive of the most intense emotions, then we must necessarily be referring to something intrinsically tied to fear. it is inspired by terror. it is horrible.
at last, then, we are prepared to characterize this elusive Sublime. all we know now is that in its horror, it astonishes. rightfully so, OBSCURITY is the first trait Burke introduces. citing NIGHT as an excellent example of this quality, he writes that fearful things become much less so when we can see them more clearly. walking around a town during the day, we can make out people's faces, we can see down alleys, we know where we are going and we do not feel threatened. at night, however, dark faces might hide sinister intentions, alleys become wells of potential for stirring evil, and we could easily feel as though we are pricked on all sides by an impending sense of dread. all because we cannot see.
as literary evidence of this quality, Burke turns to John Milton's description of Death in "Paradise Lost:"
The other shape,
If shape it might be called that shape had none
Distinguishable, in member, joint, or limb;
Or substance might be called that shadow seemed,
For each seemed either; black he stood as night;
Fierce as ten furies; terrible as hell;
And shook a deadly dart. What seemed his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
could you paint this? Burke rambles on a bit about how superior poetry is to painting because it can represent so much without showing anything at all. whatever you think of that, none can deny the SUBLIME OBSCURITY of this passage. Milton gives no shape to Death where shape should be, he draws shadows where substance should be, and he hints only at the brief possibility of a head. in every darkness, the being exists in the extreme--in blackness, in ferocity, in terror, and in death. which contributes to Burke's next point.
after taking that brief sidestep into a comparison of painting and poetry, Burke addresses this superlative nature of Death by noting that INFINITY is married to the Sublime, precisely because it is the most OBSCURE thing we know of:
The ideas of eternity, and infinity, are among the most affecting we have, and yet perhaps there is nothing of which we really understand so little, as of infinity and eternity.
here, we might be deceived into thinking that this is the first time that Burke introduces "lack of understanding" as central to the Sublime. but if we recall, his very definition of Astonishment centered on the mind's complete consumption with one object, such that it cannot reason anything out, let alone the very object it focuses upon. wherever we encounter the infinite or the eternal, of course, we only encounter something for which the mind to trip over again and again. thus, following infinity and eternity, we discover the Sublime.
Burke moves on to the next most obvious trait: "I know of nothing sublime which is not some modification of power." to arrive at this truth is natural enough. we need only recall why terror is so intertwined with the Sublime. we feel those strongest emotions when we sense impending pain, a terror to our animal minds. pain stretched out to its most extreme degree is Death, the terror of terrors. now, when we imagine POWER, we imagine that which has control over us and, in turn, the ability to cause pain. that which, like a growling beast or a marching army or a swelling ocean, could easily swipe us down in one swift motion. among other examples, Burke gives us a portrait of the whale, from the book of Job:
Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant for ever? shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?
therefore, anything with POWER is always a characteristic of the SUBLIME.
All PRIVATIONS, says Burke, are of the Sublime, because "Vacuity, Darkness, Solitude, and Silence" are all terrible. again, we can easily translate all these terms into subsets of the infinite: "Infinite lack of objects, Infinite lack of light, Infinite lack of company, and Infinite lack of sound."
Burke moves on to discuss how VASTNESS, or "greatness of dimension, is a powerful cause of the sublime." this, of course, might already be apparent from examples of the sublime i've given earlier, especially the ocean. the more interesting point Burke raises in this section, however, is that one can find VASTNESS by looking through microscopes:
However, it may not be amiss to add to these remarks upon magnitude; that, as the great extreme of dimension is sublime, so the last extreme of littleness is in some measure sublime likewise; when we attend to the infinite divisibility of matter, when we pursue animal life into these excessively small, and yet organized beings, that escape the nicest inquisition of the sense, when we push our discoveries yet downward, and consider those creatures so many degrees yet smaller, and the still diminishing scale of existence, in tracing which the imagination is lost as well as the sense, we become amazed and confounded at the wonders of minuteness; nor can we distinguish in its effect this extreme of littleness from the vast itself. For division must be infinite as well as addition; because the idea of a perfect unity can no more be arrived at, than that of a compleat whole to which nothing may be added.
from the leviathan to the bacterium, from the stretches of space and time to the orbit of an electron, we find the sublime. and so, Burke elaborates on a trait of the infinite that may have already been apparent from the outset: it stretches in both directions.
every time i reach the next section, where Burke elaborates on SUCCESSION and UNIFORMITY as contributors to the sublime, i pity the man for not having lived through the second half of the twentieth century. had he been here to witness the birth of Minimalism and Electronic Music In General, i feel that he would have had another well-fit example to add to the next edition of his Enquiry. for what genre of music rivals either of those two in fulfilling these two conditions of Burke's:
1. Succession; which is requisite that the parts may be continued so long, and in such a direction, as by their frequent impulses on the sense to impress the imagination with an idea of their progress beyond their actual limits. 2. Uniformity; because if the figures of the parts should be changed, the imagination at every change finds a check; you are presented at every alteration with the termination of one idea, and the beginning of another; by which it becomes impossible to continue that uninterrupted progression, which alone can stamp on bounded objects the character of infinity.
Wikipedia defines "Four-on-the-floor" as "a musical rhythm pattern used in disco and electronic dance music, characterized by a steady, uniformly accented beat played on the bass drum in 4/4 time." but i digress. one need only relate these qualities to other sublimities we have so far noted to see that these traits certainly make up the sublime.
DIFFICULTY, says Burke, is another source of the the sublime. citing Stonehenge as a good example, to which i might add the monolithic Pyramids of Egypt, the intricate works of Aphex Twin, and the very Universe itself, our philosopher suggests that "when any work seems to have required immense force and labour to effect it, the idea is grand."
likewise, Burke claims MAGNIFICENCE to be a source of the sublime. though this might be better segmented off into various pieces and siphoned to each other characteristic, Burke believes it to be a quality of its own: "The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite any idea of grandeur." well, could that not merely be because it is OBSCURE, POWERFUL, VAST, INFINITE, and filled with one of the greatest aspects of the sublime...
...DARKNESS. perhaps merely a more scientific restatement of OBSCURITY, the sublime is summoned in DARKNESS. to those who challenge this claim with the most POWERFUL, VAST, and MAGNIFICENT of counter-examples, the sun, i present you with a dare: stare into the sun. as Burke expresses so brilliantly, the extreme of light is nothing but another form of DARKNESS: "Extreme light, by overcoming the organs of sight, obliterates all objects, so as in its effect exactly to resemble darkness." and, referring back to the section on VASTNESS, in which we noted that infinity runs in two directions (maybe more than that, but let's keep it simple here), Burke says, "And this is not the only instance wherein the opposite extremes operate equally in favour of the sublime, which in all things abhors mediocrity."
as we approach the end of Burke's system of classification, we see him in a way repeating previous assertions through different media: "Excessive loudness alone is sufficient to overpower the soul, to suspend its action, and to fill it with terror." POWER VASTNESS OBSCURITY. i don't really feel like elaborating here. "A sudden beginning, or sudden cessation of sound of any considerable force has the same power." But of course, of course. And on, and on.
Burke ends his list with a curious quality: INTERMITTENCE. "A low, tremulous, intermitting sound, though it seems in some respects opposite to that just mentioned, is productive of the sublime," Burke claims. and i only have one concrete example to back this up, in Burke's own terms. Professor Rick Blackwood instilled in us over and over that humans are only animals. though many of us had already arrived at this conclusion long ago, we had not exhausted a thorough dissection of its causes and effects. far from it. one example Blackwood pushed on us was the use of a low, tremulous, intermitting sound in films, precisely at the moment before something frightful was expected to happen. a woman walking alone down a dark alley. a group of soldiers treading through an unusual silent forest. a child lying in bed staring at the opening door. Blackwood's hypothesis came down to evolution. we fear this kind of sound because it sounds like something very large and powerful, about to close its jaws around us. Burke basically says the same, though he does not go so far as saying it is a vestige of a past in which leopards were a sublime, constant threat.
the sublime, according to Edmund Burke:
{ ASTONISHMENT && TERROR | where A and T are caused by perceiving some combination of OBSCURITY, POWER, PRIVATION, VASTNESS, INFINITY, SUCCESSION, UNIFORMITY, DIFFICULTY, MAGNIFICENCE, DARKNESS, LOUDNESS, SUDDENNESS, and/or INTERMITTENCE } --> SUBLIME
0909232024
I DON'T KNOW
all people do all day long is babble.
hello how are you i'm doing just fine actually i just woke up i just took a shower i just got out of class i just ate breakfast i just ate lunch i just ate dinner i just got back from football i just got back from playing a game of chess i just got back from designing a program that can play mancala i just got back from drawing a whale yeah, it's pretty cool yeah, it sucked yeah, it was okay what are you up to that's cool that sucks that's okay whatever i don't know so anyway what are you doing now what are you doing today what are you doing tonight what are you doing later i'm actually really tired i have to go wash off i have to go to class i'm going to breakfast i'm going to lunch i'm going to dinner i'm going to football i'm going to go play a game of chess i'm going to go design a program that can play mancala i'm going to go draw a whale yeah yeah yeah do you want to come i wish i could bring you maybe i'll see you later maybe not alright cool i love you fuck you haha peace later bye
call me a misanthrope or a dumb douchey dick or whatever you want, i don't care. sometimes i can't stand human conversation. people never say anything. they just go on and on about this or that, they tell me all the things they hate and all the things they love and they give reasons as if there are reasons for the things they do and, even if there actually were, as if they actually know what those reasons are.
i instantly like lyrics 100x more if they incorporate the phrase "i don't know."
my History of the English Language professor gave the class a little assignment: describe LANGUAGE in five words (probably adjectives). here's what i chose:
AMORPHOUS
BEAUTIFUL
CRIPPLED
DAILY
EXPRESSION
i didn't originally intend on only using the first five letters of the alphabet, but it just so happened that way. i'm sure you've instantly agreed with all the terms i've used to describe language, but you might be wondering why i, a clear hater of human speech, would venture out so far from my original stake and call the disgusting beast BEAUTIFUL. i bet you're wondering, an explanation is sure to come. i bet you're saying, tell me, clever fool, flying fish, vapid mule, how oh how oh how can language be both flopping and walking at the same time? well, i'll tell you.
i don't know.
0909202246
"A CLEAR IDEA IS THEREFORE ANOTHER NAME FOR A little IDEA" -- EDMUND BURKE
An epiphany or great idea
communicable
Stoned?
Great? Lucid? Bright? Simple? Or was it supposed to be 5 letters?
Lucid?